So, please be nice but I desperately need some advice about the long term implications of my family's situation.

I was arrested last year for possession of indecent images and bailed. I could not return home to my wife and daughter (aged 2) and was only allowed access under supervision by (at first) my extended family members and then eventually my wife was allowed to supervise me out and about (but not inside my temporary address for some reason). This was under the terms of my bail and supervision conditions were set by CS.

I was eventually charged and prosecuted in November after being on bail for 8 months. I received a suspended prison sentence, supervison (probation meetings) for 18 months, community service and a SOPO allowing police officers to check my internet history on request. Also 10 years on the sex offenders register.

On the night of the sentence CS came to both my wife's and my current address to get us to sign an interim order that restricts me seeing my daughter at all outside of 2 hours a week supervised by CS whilst they carry out assessments. I am also not allowed to facetime/skype or have my wife send me pictures of our daughter. They informed us that they were raising the case status to child protection and also public law outline (PLO) at the same time.

At the moment CS are dragging everything out having multiple meetings for both child protection and PLO where the exact same information is laboriously repeated.

I have now had my parenting assessment interviews by CS and an interview with police offender management unit who are completing an 'ARMS' assessment. This week CS are finishing my wife's interviews and then I assume taking several weeks to fill in the pamphlet that is the parenting assessment and pass to 'managers' for a decision.

Throughout the last 2 months it has become quite apparent that CS's intention is to convince my wife to end or marriage and not allow me back to the family home. They have presented her as a risk by the fact that she continues to stand by me and also because she wrote me a character reference for the court. She has stated that she does not believe I would harm any child and this has contributed to CS's assertion I am a risk. The PLO letter that they wrote to both of us stated that our child was at risk of being taken into care.

They have presented my wife with details of the images in relation to my conviction to try and convince her I am a danger to children and stated that I will never be allowed unsupervised access to my children ever again until they are 18. FYI my wife is pregnant and giving birth in May so there is also going to be a pre birth assessment as well (more paperwork!!)

However CS recently seem to have conceded and accepted that I will be going home and resuming a family life because 'they cant be involved forever'. They have described how my wife will have to attend a barnados course teaching her how to look for signs of abuse.

As a bit of background both my wife and I are university educated and both held good jobs with firms in the Big four accountancy practices. We had a joint income of around £130K up until recently when I was fired and had no history of drink or drug problems and no other dysfunction or previous arrests or convictions. We own our own home in a very nice affluent area in the north of england.

My presentence report and current probation service reports all show that I have shown remorse for my conviction and an understanding of my behaviour. There was never any suggestion or evidence (nor would there be) that I had ever contacted children online or attempted to abuse or conduct contact offences or promote or distribute Images. It seems however that CS consider my crimes to be on par with child rapists etc.

My question to the forum is this; how would I go about challenging (legally) CS's seemingly concrete decision that I would never be allowed to supervise my children alone? The implications for my wife on our future life together are severe as she would effectively be never allowed to go out alone or exercise in the mornigs before work for example without asking another family member to chaperone me (she has no family where we live either)

I have a son due in May and would never be able to take him to the football etc or take my daughter (who loves me so much it breaks my heart saying goodbye every Monday) out shopping or whatever and just do normal fatherley activities.

At the moment (if we were so inclined) we could ignore the interim order and conditions set by CS and I assume they would progress matters to the family court? We are of course not going to do this as I understand complying with CS is the only option at the moment to not risk a care order.

However how do I, perhaps in the future once my supervison period of 18 months is complete, challenge CS not allowing me unsupervised access?

What is confusing is that the lady who supervises sex offenders who initially met with me when i met with the offender management unit police officer has told me that other men she deals with who have been convicted of indecent images possession are allowed unsupervised access as it would be 'unreasonable and unworkable' to expect otherwise.

Is this therefore a grey area? What view would a family court judge take to balance the human right to a family life with CS's opinions on my level of risk?

It is worth noting that the crown court judge did have powers at his disposal to impose restrictions on me having unsupervised access to children and/or other impositions on behaviour in the community but chose NOT to impose any such SOPO

Thanks for reading. Any help would be most welcome. FYI i do have a solicitor dealing with the PLO but it would be helpful to know what is a typical outcome in these circumstances.

Hi. Suzie will obviously be the best help for you here, but I just wanted to say having read your message that CS will be looking for your wife to completely and utterly admit and agree that you pose a risk. This is the experience I have had with CS. They do not want her to be seen to defend you above her own children, they want to see she is putting them first and that she understands you pose a risk, however small, to the children. Because she is not currently doing this and is seen to be trying to prove you would not hurt children they will have concerns that she will be blind to any signs to the contrary.

CS will want to ensure she is as educated as possible as to how sexual abuse works so that she is in the best position possible to protect them, and so she will be asked to attend courses and possibly counselling. Ultimately they will want to hear her say she understands the risk you pose and that she will always put the children first.

Good luck, and hope Suzie can be of further help to you with the rest of your message.

I see from your post that you feel frustrated by the involvement that Children Services is having with your family at the moment following your conviction. It must be very difficult for you to see your daughter only in a supervised setting.

Whilst I can understand that you are remorseful of your actions which led to you being in the criminal justice process, Children Services have a duty to ensure that children in their area are brought up in a safe environment.

Children Services’ role is situations such as yours, is to carry out assessments to ascertain the level of risk your daughter might be exposed to in your wife’s and your care. It is usual when there are issues relating to potential risk that children Services will want an agreement that whilst the child remains in the family home the perpetrator will not have unsupervised contact. The reason for this is to ensure that a child is at no risk whilst investigations are being carried out.

The agreement that you and your wife have signed is a written agreement and not an order. There is an expectation that you will both adhere to the terms of the agreement. Your solicitor will no doubt have explained this to you already.

Although the criminal case has concluded, you should understand that Children Services will continue their own investigations. The police and Children Services are looking at the different things. The police for evidence for a successful prosecution and children services to safeguard a child or children. Children Services are unlikely to agree to unsupervised contact taking place until their child protection enquiries and a risk assessment is completed.

You have had very good peer advice from Shaftesbury on your thread. Children Services is concerned not only about the risk that you may pose to your child but also your wife’s ability to protect her from harm now and in the future. If they consider that her support for you will affect her ability to protect it might lead to a decision to commence proceedings for a care order. It is therefore very important that you both engage and cooperate with the ongoing assessment process.

It seems premature for Children Services to say that you will never be able to have unsupervised contact since they have not yet completed their risk assessment of you. This assessment would inform their decision about whether contact should be supervised or not. Of course, depending on the outcome of their investigation and the decision made about contact, you would be entitled to seek legal advice as to whether they acted outside of their powers, to enable you to make an application to the court.

I do not think Children Services are acting outside of their duty and powers in saying that contact should be supervised during their investigation. Contact is for the benefit of the child and until they believe that unsupervised contact is safe they have a duty to safeguard the child. If you do wish to challenge the decision and or make a complaint, a copy of our advice sheet is here for your information.

Although you say you were told by someone at offender management that other fathers are able to have unsupervised contact, each case is different and decisions will be made as appropriate for the particular case. I think it would be right to say that her view is from the offender’s point of view. Children Services is concerned about the child. That is not to say, that in your case the same will not happen once a risk assessment is completed.

In any application to the family court about a child, the court’s paramount consideration is the welfare of the child and it is this that will decide what is in a child’s best interests and the other rights which exist for the family as a whole.

It is not clear whether you have already had an initial child protection conference and, if not, I suggest you read our advice sheet relating to child protection procedures. You may also wish to watch our film about this here

If there is already a child protection plan in place, then you and your wife should ensure that you adhere to the terms of the plan and do what is asked of you both. As far as the public law outline (PLO) is concerned, your solicitor will be able to attend the meeting with you to assist you in negotiating how best court proceedings can be prevented. There should be a clear indication of what needs to happen to prevent Children Services making an application to the court.

You may wish to contact the Lucy Faithfull Foundation on 0808 1000 900, the organisation offers advice where there are issues of a sex offending.

Should you wish to speak to an Adviser, please feel free to telephone our free, confidential advice line on 0808 801 0366. The advice line is open Monday to Friday from 9.30 a.m. to 3.00 p.m.

This issue demonstrates the complete inconsistency of sentencing. I too am subject to a 10 year order of supervision with my 9 year old daughter for having 30 images, one of which was in the most serious category. However I have found dozens of other cases where people with thousands of images as well as actual rape are being allowed unsupervised family access. The courts of appeal have clearly stated that a SOPO must only be imposed where there is a clear risk of contact offending. And this is especially important if this disrupts a child's family life. I am a professional man too, of previous good character and my wife has supported me. The 10 year order is utter ly ludicrous, unwarranted, draconian and is tearing this famly apart. Of course social services love it, ordering an investigation when it became known I had spent a few minutes's in my daughter's bedroom putting up a clock while two other adults were in the house. It's like something from a nightmare or life under the Stasi. They wont even let my 19 year old army officer son be a superviser because he is too immature - interesting observation that as they havent even met him. There was a case last week with a man with hundreds of sexual abuse videos and thousands of photographs who was given no order whatsover because he plans to start a family. What madness is this> And why do the advisers here always take the side of the social services who often merely exercise the power to disrupt in the name of safeguarding. It's appalling and I will drag them through every court in Europe if I have to.

Certainly agree with the poster above about a lack of consistency in the legal and social care approach to IOC.

My QC in the court said i could go to jail because Inhad class A preteen images and videos - which i was not expecting at all (solicitor had said no chance of jail). Fortunately i didn't get any sort of supervision order in respect of child contact otherwise i could have considered suicide without (as it turns out now) my wife's support.

for those in similar circumstances right now, prepare yourself for 12 months of hell frankly by the social workers of great britain.

The SS dragged their feet for months after my conviction.

They prepared a parenting assessment by the end of february but it wasn't signed off by management until late March.

In late April they finally got around to clearing that I could spend time at my own house, with my wife proving supervision and since then I have gone round every night after work (got a new job in May) and also spent all weekends there.

SS then said that my wife would have to do a safeguarding course, took about 2 months to arrange it with Barnados (as they wanted to use the Lucy Faithful foundation first) and then said it couldn't start until our new baby was at least 3 months old (otherwise my wife would not be in the right state of mind etc). The baby was born in May and i was only allowed in the hospital after some last minute wrangling and agreeing certain conditions (like my wife's mother also being present)

This is a recurring theme - despite there never being any suggestion or suspicion of contact abuse nor any imposition by the criminal court in terms of my contact with any people in society the SS pushed the hospital to ban me outright with the constant view that I will be off abusing vulnerable people at the first opportunity...absolutely crazy.

The PLO process lasted until June at which point it only came out of that and back down to child protection status because they had reached the legal limitation.

They insisted i do offender sessions with a specialist probation worker which was finished by Spring. My probation worker was then off sick for over 5 months and i was only official given a new one around 6 weeks ago.

Both of the safeguarding course and my probation work took until late September to be completed during which time our son has completed his gestation, birthed and become a 6 month old little boy!

My wife and I were making good ground until the safeguarding course began; however the course was clearly designed to convince her I can never be trusted and it did its job. They made me sign an agreement so that the Barbados worker could share evidence from my case with my wife (despite the police worker within SOMU asking for that not to happen) and so presented my wife with lots of details of images and videos i had looked at, as well as search terms and one chat messages from years ago which was very bad and she says now that she cannot forget that.

Our next 6 monthly case conference is next week and we have been told that it could well come out of child protection and back to 'child in need'.

At that point I may have been allowed to move home but because of my wife's feelings that will not happen.

Long terms SS have been very vague - they state that they would like there to be no unsupervised/intimate care provided by me whilst under child in need, however they only say that my wife would be the 'protective factor' once they have exited completely in several months time, for example.

I've pointed out that wouldn't work if i was living alone and wanting to spend time with my kids but they are unable or unwilling to answer the question.

My wife has said she doesn't want me to see our daughter naked or be unsupervised in the future but frankly it would be necessary if we do divorce so that I can see them.

All very upsetting as i've never bathed or changed my son since his birth - never even seen him naked and you certainly feel a lost bond because of it.

Overall I would encourage anyone in similar positions to try to be pleasant to these people - certainly my attitude of ridiculing their slowness and lack of professionalism/sick leave/ever changing staff has not served me well and my frustration with their public sector work to rule, arse covering and frankly uncaring attitude has only counted against me.

The system is clearly in a complete mess and cannot deal with these cases - the party line is that people who look at IOC are just as much abusers as those raping kids but you are unwise to put this argue forward.

Today's news about as many as 100,000 people are estimated to be viewing in the u.k. hopefully will bring about a debate as to the ways to combat IOC and men's indulgence in it - without trying to excuse myself I know that if it never existed I would never have become sexually aroused by it and would have stuck to good old 'teen' porn i used in my early 20s. Now that i no longer view pornography I know that my sexually wiring fucked up by what i looked at and it was in a way a severe addiction to search for and find harder and more degrading movies of the 'perfect girl' being abused.

Would help if anyone else could share their thoughts or know of any support groups online for recovering sex offenders.

What madness is this> And why do the advisers here always take the side of the social services who often merely exercise the power to disrupt in the name of safeguarding. It's appalling and I will drag them through every court in Europe if I have to.[/quote]The very best of luck to you. You are exactly right. It is like a kafkaesque pr Orwellian nightmare. The CS are utterly risible backcoverers. Whilst it is inconsistent, there does seem to be a pattern. Well educated, intelligent fathers seem to come off worst. Is this because the authorities find us and our offences too 'complex'? They feel threatened because they are 'working' (as they love to put it) with somebody more intelligent and more logical than themselves, and they know that we are capable of seeing through the atrociousness of the system and articulating the tyranny they represent. The sheer destruction of family life they cause, under the mandate of 'child protection', is an appalling savagery, staggering that it can happen on the 21st century. They must be responsible for a lot of suicides, and IMO should be hammered for an assault on human rights. In 95% of their cases there is probably no risk of harm to a child whatsoever, but they feel justified in the most heartbreaking torture of that 95% because they are protecting (or might be) the 5% they are unable to discern.Pathetic. They are so dangerous to the well-being of families, and hence... children!

Last edited by PerfectlySafeDad on Mon Mar 27, 2017 12:02 am, edited 2 times in total.

Now that i no longer view pornography I know that my sexually wiring fucked up by what i looked at and it was in a way a severe addiction to search for and find harder and more degrading movies of the 'perfect girl' being abused.

Would help if anyone else could share their thoughts or know of any support groups online for recovering sex offenders.[/quote]

My story is exactly the same. I don't know of any such support group. It's a big vacuum. The only policy seems to be to prosecute in cahoots with maximum media humiliation. Hardly the best way to treat mental illness.

I suggest you contact the Juststopitnow helpline on 0808 1000 900 or email help@stopitnow.org.uk. They will be able to advise you about any online support groups for recovering sex offenders or about support in your area.